Public Bridge¶

Note

Attaching nodes to a public bridge is a planned feature.

A public bridge is implemented as a layer 2 network bridged to a physical interface. A node connected to a public bridge has its virtual interface directly bridged to a physical interface on the host machine. IP address configuration is shared with the network of the physical uplink interface.

Danger

Be sure you understand the security posture of lab nodes and the implication of directly attaching to the physical network before using this connectivity method.

Containers, a VM and a unikernel attached to a public bridge that is bridged to the host's physical NIC

Host Bridge¶

The host bridge joins a physical interface on the Sherpa server to a Linux bridge, so that lab nodes can be connected directly to the physical network.

Host bridge networking: the physical NIC is a member of the br-sherpa0 Linux bridge, and the sherpa-bridge libvirt network sits on top of it

Physical NIC is a member of the bridge and has no IP address of its own.
br-sherpa0 is a Linux bridge that you create on the host, for example with netplan. Create it before running sherpad init.
sherpa-bridge is a libvirt network in bridge mode on top of br-sherpa0. sherpad init creates it.

Example Configuration¶

This netplan configuration adds the physical interface enp9s0 to br-sherpa0. Replace enp9s0 with the host's physical interface.

network:
  version: 2
  ethernets:
    enp9s0: {}
  bridges:
    br-sherpa0:
      interfaces: [enp9s0]
      parameters:
        stp: false
        forward-delay: 0